If we are talking about lifters at the MS and MSIC performance class, they do a lot of minutes of consistent mobility and stretching. Undergo massage therapy, they use warming emulsions. After training, they have saunas. Eventually they use substances of a steroid character… I think swimming is also a good option.
Not gaeilic or Sheiko but one thing that helps me is using a wider that competition hand spacing on all my sets under say 75-80%. Guess its a work-around not a solution but does prevent overuse injury.
Also helps force you to focus on upper back tightness when it doesn’t come as a corollary from narrower hand placement.
A lot of the well known lifters here in the Western word do the same sort of stuff and still can’t handle much squatting with a straight bar, I wonder if there is some particular massage technique or exercise that would fix it.
I have tried a whole bunch of stuff including widening my grip, it does reduce the pain but doesn’t eliminate it completely. The last two weeks I have only squatted once a week with a straight bar and I have no arm issues. I have my heavy squat day on Tuesday and my secondary bench day on Thursday, Thursday is when I usually feel my arms starting to ache in recent times.
Since I now own a transformer bar, if I decide to do some higher frequency squatting in the future I will use that mostly and the straight bar only for the heaviest day of the week. I did something a little over a year ago where I squatted 4-5 times a week for a couple months, my squat made some good gains but my bench sucked, I could barely control the descent. I was even waking up at night with my arms throbbing with pain, I had to take ibuprofen before training which is not really a good thing because it will reduce muscle growth.
Check out YouTube for special rehabilitation exercises, some videos are well educated.
I had some injury left chest muscle last year, which hurt a lot when train the bench press. However, I trained with a relative big pain without change and the pain in roughly the month itself disappeared.
Nice work
I watched plenty of videos and read a bunch of articles and consulted with various people, there isn’t really a way to fix it but you can work around it as I’m doing. Eric Cressey, who is a specialist in shoulder issues, has said that in some cases it has to do with the shape of the scapula, some people are just predisposed to it while others can squat as much as they want and never get and shoulder or arm pain. Look at Chad Wesley Smith for example, he says that he can’t handle much low bar squatting and alternates with high bar from one week to the next - in a peaking phase. He has plenty of specialists to work with like Quinn Henoch, there just doesn’t appear to be a solution for many people. Unless, like I said, maybe the Russians know something because I don’t hear of any of them having this problem.
Thanks!
Tuesday Feb. 27 - main squat day
Squat with wraps
475x2 - I decided to be conservative with this since things didn’t go as planned in my last two workouts, I’m sure I could have done 4 reps. I will start doing singles as of next week, not max singles but something around RPE8.
430x3,3 - I was advised to do a bit more work in wraps, which is what I was already thinking since my technique definitely needs work. These sets were relatively easy, the descent is more challenging than actually lifting the weight. I need to speed up the last few inches of my descent (while staying tight) to both hit depth and get the most out of the wraps and my stretch reflex. I can hit depth by going down slowly but then I come up slowly and there is no benefit to using wraps, and if I don’t maintain tightness then my hips get thrown back as I come out of the hole.
No wraps:
370x3x4 -90 sec. rest. Two sets less than last week on this part, but I did two more sets in wraps. Total training stress is higher due to the wrapped sets, but overall my squat workout last week wasn’t too fatiguing so I figured I could manage.
Dead squat
330x8 singles - 1 min. rest - felt better than last week, I figured out the setup.
RDL w/ bands around waist
290+mini+super minix8x3sets
Band leg curl
light bands x8 - Left calf cramped up so I stopped. I spent a few minutes screwing around with the super mini bands to figure out how to add more tension, I decided to just try these bands (which are the strongest ones I have, and I never really use) and it seemed like the right tension. However, my calves already felt fatigued from all the squatting, I squat with a fair bit of forward knee movement plus the wraps make it like occlusion training. I’m not going to risk hurting myself on an accessory exercise. I might drop these anyway, I do them from time to time because supposedly it is good for knee health and injury prevention and such, I never got any sort of carryover or anything.
McGill curl ups
6,6,5,5 - these actually feel good at the end of a lower body workout, my back felt a bit pumped before I did these and now I feel fine. I still hate them.
I think also is a good choice to look at Kelly Starrett’s channel. He has good tips on mobility and prevention of injuries.
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I actually did watch quite a few of his videos, again nothing really seemed to help. If you come across something specific to this issue then let me know.
Thursday March 3 - bench assistance day
Close grip bench
315x4,4,3 - this felt harder than I expected. It’s 10lbs more than last week so it’s not a huge difference, but still up to my expectations.
Military/OHP
215x6,5,4 - I seemed to fatigue fast here. Not sure why, I don’t feel tired.
Push ups - neutral grip on dumbbells with mini band
14, 11, 8 - progress on shit that doesn’t matter
Floor pause tricep extension
120x11,9,8 - I will use the same weight next week and try to get more reps, in the 8-12 range sounds right. My biceps started hurting during this exercise for some odd reason.
Hammer curls superset w/ band pull aparts
50s/super mini band X19/20, 15/18, 12/15 - I don’t really care for curls, but they made the pain in my biceps disappear after the first set.
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My performance the last two weeks is not quite what I had hoped for, I started this block with high expectations because everything went well in the last block which was much higher volume. Performance did not decrease at all despite the fact that I was seriously fatigued. Now I’m well rested and shit isn’t going how I wanted it to.
One thing though, for the last while I have been alternating between volume blocks and higher intensity blocks where the top sets on the competition lifts are singles and then I do lighter volume work. I thought that doing some heavier triples and doubles would have some positive effects, but so far that doesn’t seem to be the case or at least it isn’t showing yet. I got used to doing heavy singles but I find heavy rep work more challenging, and it has been said many times that you should train that which you are not good at. However, I’m thinking that maybe that wasn’t the best choice here and I should have just done singles from the start of last week.
Do you have individual training blocks written up somewhere? Or do you create them according to current feelings?
What I’m doing right now is largely based on a couple of the sample programs in one of Josh Bryant’s book, I just made some modifications because those programs were not written for me. I wouldn’t say that “feelings” is a factor in how I plan my training, I work on what needs to get stronger and I base working weights on the performance of the previous weeks as well as where I am in the training cycle.
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Friday March 2 - light squat/deadlift
Squat - with transformer bar on back squat setting
300x2x5 sets - 45 sec. rest, vertical jump in between sets
Deadlift
490x1 - As I mentioned, I’m switching to singles for the top sets and 485x2 was ugly last week so I figured this would be an appropriate starting point. This was easy and technique held up, I was tempted to do a couple more reps. I would call this RPE7, which it should be since my opener at my last meet was 495. What I realize is my issue is that I rush the initial pull off the floor, I get tight and pull the slack out and then pull full force which causes me to get thrown out of position. What I’m trying to do now is rather than trying to blast the weight off the floor I pull steadily harder and harder (for like a second or two) and basically ease the weight off the floor and then accelerate through the rest of the movement, if that makes sense. Andy Bolton said that you should never sacrifice tension for speed, that definitely applies here.
Deadlift volume work
395x3x5 - 90 sec. rest - this went well.
Deadlift paused right off the floor
375x5x3 sets - This was challenging, but good. Technique broke down on the very last rep, but that’s OK.
Barbell row
315x10,10,8
Shrugs
405x28,25
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I’m looking at Sheiko’s article on deadlift mistakes and he says the exact same thing that I concluded:
“The barbell should be accelerated, thus, initially it should be pulled slowly, then slowly accelerated towards the middle of its amplitude.”
It seems like I just got caught up in pulling a certain way and forgot what I’m actually supposed to be doing, that article is from a year and a half ago and I read it when it was first published.
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You gotta Sqquuuueeeeeeezzzzzzzeee it off the floor!
Your log is off to a good start. Many good insights already. Nice shrugs.
It actually seemed to me like things were going good until I started this log. Hopefully everything is back on track now. At least my squat hasn’t given me any issues yet.
Oh man, I’m sorry. I guess you have had some slight issues with 1 or 2 reps, here and there. But When dudes are just killing the weights, and having no problems, they don’t think too much, and they don’t write very much.
As you think through and train through your problems, and write about it, I can learn tons of good stuff. How do you get back on track, and how can I use that to stay on track myself. Like reality lifting experience.